by David Grace
The parking lot was full with mostly junkers, salt-eaten Tauruses, dented Sentras and F150s with an occasional Beemer or Infiniti thrown in as the exceptions to the rule. At the very back, looming over the quarter acre of sheet metal, were a couple of oversized pickups with full camper shells. Five minutes later the girl came out wrapped in a gray cotton bathrobe.
“Hi,” she said, trying to pretend that she wasn’t nervous. “You said two-hundred?”
“Sure.”
“What for?”
“You think I’m a cop?”
“What for?” she repeated in a voice like a child demanding a treat.
“For a good fuck,” Farber said and laughed.
“I don’t do any rough stuff, and nothing, you know, back door.”
“I wouldn’t think of it.”
She paused for a moment then glanced at the nearest camper.
“OK. I only get a fifteen minute break.” Farber shrugged and she wiggled her fingers for the money.
“When were done.”
“I have to get it now.”
“When we’re done,” Farber repeated with an edge to his voice.
She stared at him for a moment then snapped, “Forget it,” and started to turn away.
“OK, OK, half now, half when we’re done.” Farber held out five twenties. The girl stared at them for a second then stuffed them into the pocket of her robe.
“I’m Mary,” she said after she unlocked the camper’s door.
“Cliff,” Farber replied and grinned. Once inside he locked the door behind them and his smile turned feral and mean.
Twenty minutes later Farber carefully stepped down to the filthy asphalt and pulled his coat tight against the bitter wind. A few seconds later Mary stumbled after him, and shouted, “Hey! Where’s my money?”
“What money?”
“You owe me another hundred.”
“Didn’t anyone ever tell you to get your money in advance, you stupid whore?”
“Mister I got a kid. I have to–”
Farber raised his hand and she ducked back, covering her face with her arms.
“Shut up you fucking whore. I’ve already paid you more than you’re worth.”
Farber waited, part of him hoping that she’d argue and give him an excuse to slap her around but she just looked past him toward the club. Farber followed her gaze and saw the black woman standing in the open doorway, watching him. He stared for half a second then thought, Fuck it! I don’t need this shit now. He squared his shoulders and strode back toward the building. Just to show her that he wasn’t afraid of any black bitch he looked right at her and tried to force her back against the wall but then she showed him the ice pick in her right hand and he changed course, skirted the cinder-block wall and hurried around the building. He looked over his shoulder when he got to the street but the black woman had been smart enough not to follow him.
The streets were busy with people heading for the bars and flophouse motels, or looking for a good time.
The calls of the street whores, “Hey, baby, want a date?” rang from the entrances to alleys and the wide sidewalks in front of the all-night sandwich shops. Like I would let one of those diseased animals near my dick, Farber thought. A couple of blocks farther on he saw the flickering “a” in the neon script for the Belaire Motel and picked up his pace. A bunch of kids, laughing and swearing, surged out of Burger World forcing him to jog to his right where he almost tripped over a bum huddled under the grill’s hot-air exhaust.
“Jesus!” Farber cursed and grabbed onto the wall to keep from falling. Frightened, the guy looked up and tried to pull away. Particles of grease had congealed on the bum’s shoulders and the ragged baseball cap that bore a picture of an angry crow above the bill.
“Sorry,” the guy said and pulled his legs tight to his chest. Farber cringed back as a cloud of body odor and jug wine and hamburger fat caressed his face like an invisible hand.
“Fucking bums!” he muttered and detoured around the man then called out over his shoulder, “Get a fucking job!”
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
They didn’t make the eleven o’clock news but Farber’s “Paul Conklin” DMV photo got good coverage in the morning papers and on the drive-time broadcasts. Wren had promised that he would get Kane any resources he needed and Greg figured he would be a fool not to take advantage of the offer. By six a.m. they had a tip line set up and manned. By seven-thirty the phones were lighting up with calls from nut jobs, psychics, lonely old ladies, and citizens who thought that anonymously fingering their hated boss or faithless spouse would be a great way to get revenge. Farber was aware of none of this. He didn’t stagger to the bathroom to pee out the last of the rotgut scotch until almost a quarter after eight, right on time as far as he was concerned.
He planned on arriving at the bank between ten and eleven, renting a car by noon, and being on a plane by five. None of that happened. After a quick shower he ran a disposable razor over his face and then unzipped the inside corner pocket of his go-bag for his safety deposit box key. And it wasn’t there. A little ball of vacuum opened in Farber’s stomach and he scrabbled his fingers helplessly around the compartment. No key. He dumped the bag on the bed and, with rising fear, worked his way through every item. No key. He went back to the bag itself, fingering every cavity, every zipper, every seam. No key.
Cold with terror he collapsed into the room’s single chair and tried to think. The bank box held his new ID, his new credit card, his new passport and, except for a bit over the eight hundred bucks still in his wallet, all his cash. He couldn’t get into the box without the key. He couldn’t get a replacement key without identification in his new name. All the IDs in his new name were in the box. He had to have the key. Where the hell was the key!
Think! Think! Think! When was the last time he had seen it?
He had visited the bank three weeks before to drop off his latest payment from Ryan Munroe. Farber ran the morning back through his mind. As he always did when he went to the bank he had dressed in his blue suit, white shirt and dark tie. He gave the teller the slip with his new name, Harlan Boyce, and the box number. She pulled the signature card and compared it to the paper he had just signed. Of course the signatures matched. She smiled and grabbed her keys. That was one of the things he liked about that bank, no computers. It was like being back in 1970 – no photo IDs, no mag strips, not even a computerized database, just a name, a box number, a small steel drawer filled with well-worn signature cards and a key.
The woman had inserted her key and his into the locks and opened the little door, then she removed both keys and gave his back to him. He took the box to a little room, shoved the bundles of bills inside and closed it up again. A few moments later they repeated the process in reverse. She locked the door. Had she given him back his key? Yes, he remembered her handing it to him. He had held on to it until he was back in the car, then he must have done what he always did. He had to have slipped it into the little pocket he had sewn into the lining of his suit coat, the one that nothing could fall out of. When he was on the street he used that pocket to keep special items, the safety deposit box key, flash drives from Munroe with details of a new assignment, an emergency stash of flattened hundred dollar bills.
All right, he had put the key in the pocket. Then he went home, no, wait, he didn’t go home. He was going to go home when the burner phone rang. It was Munroe calling him for a meet to give him new instructions from their mysterious employer. He remembered Munroe had made a joke about the suit, “A pig in a party dress” he said and laughed. Farber had smiled but inside he’d wanted to break Munroe’s nose. Then what? Think?
He’d had to run around checking out some stuff for Munroe. He remembered that he had missed lunch. It was almost dinner time by the time he finished Munroe’s errands and he stopped for take-out on the way home. When he arrived he was still pissed at Munroe over the remark about the suit and hungry and he had to pee. He’d thrown the suit on t
he bed, hit the head, then gone downstairs in his underwear and a bathrobe to eat the pizza he had picked up before it went cold.
Then what? Then what? TV? A few beers? When he’d finally gone upstairs the suit had still been lying on the bed. He’d put it into the closet! Had he taken the key out? He didn’t remember, but, no, he couldn’t have because if he had removed the key from the secret pocket the only place he would have put it would have been the go-bag and it wasn’t there. So, it still had to be in the suit!
The cops would search the house. They’d go through everything, but would they find a key in a secret pocket of a suit hanging in the closet? Maybe. What were the odds? Farber thought about it, thought about the crime-scene guys he had known when he was on the job. They were pretty careful when they were running a room where they’d found a couple of bodies but an empty house where the guy was already in the wind? Eighty percent at least, he figured, eighty-twenty or better that they wouldn’t find the key.
Farber glanced at the curtains. It was full daylight. No way he was going to be able to get back into the house now. He’d have to wait until dark, way after dark, three, four a.m. and then go in over the back fence, slip upstairs and get it from the suit. He wanted to be gone right now but there was no help for it. He wondered if the raid on his house had made the news and he turned on the TV. Ten seconds later his picture flashed up on the screen – “Armed and Dangerous.” Shit! Shit! Shit.
He’d have to hole up in this fucking room all day. Had anyone seen him? The night-shift guy had been half in the bag and besides he didn’t look like a big fan of current affairs. It was a risk that the night clerk might see the picture on the news and connect it to the guy in room 203 but less of one than showing his face outside right now.
OK, OK, Farber told himself. Things could be worse. I’ll just play it cool until it gets dark. Have a pizza delivered for lunch and shove the money through a crack in the door. When it’s good and dark I’ll steal a car, get the key, dump the car a few blocks from the bank and keep my head down until it opens. Maybe some cotton balls to puff out my cheeks and a fake mustache and a prayer that the old lady at the bank is half blind will do the trick.
Sounds like a plan, Farber thought and switched the channel.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
While Danny poured over Paul Conklin’s credit card charges and phone bills for some clue that he may have previously missed Kane took Farber’s picture to the Capitol Mail & Shipping store.
“Does this guy rent a box here?” Kane asked the fortyish woman behind the register.
“I don’t think so,” she said after a quick glance.
“Look again.”
She pretended to stare at the photo then shook her head. “I don’t know him.”
“He rents box 1126.”
“If you already know that why did you ask me?” she snapped.
“Why did you tell me that you don’t recognize him?”
Angrily she grabbed the picture, squinted as if looking at it through a layer of frosted glass then said, “Oh, yeah, him,” and dropped it on the counter.
“Open the box.”
“Do you got a warrant?”
“Open it or I’ll break it open and drag you in for obstruction of justice.” When she didn’t move and Kane reached for his cuffs.
“People have rights, you know!” she half-shouted then finally reached for her keys when Kane dangled the cuffs in front of her face.
“Open it!”
“Fascists!” she muttered as she unlocked the box. It was empty.
“Are you happy now?”
“I’d be happier locking you up for helping a cop killer.”
“You’ll change your tune when the People take their government back!”
Kane had a momentary urge to slap the sneer off her face but it passed.
“Your government thanks you for your cooperation,” he said instead. “Have a wonderful day.”
It was almost ten when he joined the crew that Wren had provided to search the 817 house. All they found were some fast food receipts, a water bill, and a coupon for 50% off a car wash and wax. There were no pictures, no bank statements, no nothing. They did find a laptop computer but the hard disk had been wiped. The techs promised to go through it anyway but Kane didn’t hold out much hope that they’d turn up anything useful even if they could unscramble it.
He called Danny then Gene Boland, the agent who was running the tip line, and they both had nothing. Kane was back in the office by two. The tip line had yielded a few calls worth checking, but so far they had all turned out to be dead ends. Around three o’clock Boland told Kane that they had four more tips that looked promising and showed him the logs.
“How many guys do you have available?” Greg asked him.
“I’ve got three in the field. They should be freed up in fifteen or twenty minutes.”
Kane leafed through the slips. “I’m not doing anything useful. I’ll take this one,” he said pulling a page out of the pile and returning the rest. Boland made a note and gave Kane his card.
“Call my cell after you eliminate it and I’ll give you the next lead.”
Boland’s pessimism irritated Greg but then lots of things pissed him off, So what’s new? he asked himself. The name on the call slip was “Evelyn Brouseau” with an address not far from Kalorama Park. About fifteen minutes later his phone said, “Arriving at destination on right” and he looked for a place to park. A long black sign with fancy pink letters bolted to the face of the building a few feet above a matching pink awning read: “Gentlemen’s Lounge.”
The door retreated a few inches in response to blows from Kane’s fist and a black woman peered at him through the gap.
“We’re closed. We open at five.”
Kane held up his creds.
“Agent Gregory Kane, Homeland Security. I’m looking for Evelyn Brouseau.”
The woman paused for a moment then pulled the door all the way back.
“I’m Evelyn Brouseau.” A glass booth with a depression in the counter to allow money to slide in and out crouched against the left hand wall. “Let’s go into the office.”
Brouseau led Kane through a beaded curtain and across the deserted showroom. The floors were sticky, the carpet threadbare and stained. Bars, like sausage factories, Kane reflected, were never meant to be seen by the customers in the light of day. They climbed a flight of stairs and she ushered him into a small office. A window made of one-way glass looked out over the runway. Brouseau took a seat behind a cheap, scarred desk.
“I’m supposed to run the place when the boss isn’t here. He usually gets in around eight. After that I watch the registers and I fill in on the floor when we’re shorthanded.” She glanced down at the runway. “The girls come and go. . . . You know how it is,” she added a moment later.
“But not you.”
Brouseau shrugged. “The money’s good if you stay off the booze and the drugs. We’re the employer of last resort for these girls. Most of them, if they didn’t have a drug problem, an alcohol problem, an abusive boyfriend or father or a crack-whore mother problem, they wouldn’t be here in the first place.” A wistful look slid over her face. “Well, it’s better than turning tricks on the street.”
“Do you own a piece of the club?”
Evelyn gave Kane a fleeting smile.
“No. I’m just the hired help.”
“That’s why you still dance?”
“That’s where the money is. I may not be a kid anymore, but,” another quick smile, “I’ve still got what a lot of men want. . . . But that’s not why you’re here.”
Kane handed her two pictures, one from Mearle Farber’s employment file and the other from Paul Conklin’s driver’s license.
“Yeah, that’s the guy,” she said, tapping Conklin’s picture after half a second.
“When did you see him?”
“Last night around eleven, more or less.”
“You’re sure?”
Evelyn paused, her lips coming to rest someplace between a smile and a frown.
“Did you ever hear the song, ‘Private Dancer,’ Agent Kane?”
“Ahhh, Tina Turner?”
“Do you know the words?”
Kane shrugged.
“You don`t look at their faces.
“You don’t ask their names,” she said as if reciting a poem.
“You don`t think of them as human.
“You don’t think of them at all.
“You just keep your mind on the money.
“And you keep your eyes on the wall.”
“If that’s how it works why do you remember him?”
“The men who sit out there,” Evelyn nodded toward the runway, “are more or less creatures who come here to fulfill their animal needs, like werewolves under the influence of a full moon. That doesn’t necessarily make them vicious or mean, just pathetic. But sometimes we get the other ones, the ones like him.” Evelyn tapped Conklin’s photo. “The ones who want to do more than just look.”
“What did he want to do?”
“He took one of the girls out back, one of the new ones, young and stupid and desperate. The young and stupid part gets knocked out of them pretty fast until only the desperate part remains.” She paused and for a moment seemed somewhere else, then her eyes clicked back into focus and whatever memory she had dredged up slipped away. “Anyway, he ripped her off and was working himself up to doing something more when I showed up.”
“He was worried about you being a witness?”
“He didn’t like the ice pick I showed him.”
“How close were you to him?”
“About as far away as I am from you.”
“You said that this happened out back?”